Tuesday, 9 February 2010

A Manifesto For Sepia Saturday

A MANIFESTO FOR SEPIA SATURDAY.

1. We belong to a favoured generation: the first generation of the digital age. Whilst our ancestors have valiantly attempted to preserve their own unique history in scraps of written narrative and faded and creased photographs, we have the unique ability to fix these memories for ever as our legacy to future generations.

2. Scanning, blogging and digital storage provide us with the means of preserving the past, but we also have a duty to preserve the stories and images of those that contributed to our society as we know it. Whilst we can leave to academic historians the task of documenting the lives of the rich and famous, we believe that the most remote second-cousin and the most distant of maiden aunts has made a unique contribution to the lives that we lead. Each one of us has a duty to help preserve the stories of these builders of the modern world.

3. Whilst images alone are fascinating documents, images with words - be they simple half-remembered names and dates or gripping narrative histories - are even better. The synthesis of image and words provides the most effective insight into the past.

4. "Sepia" is an alliterative convenience rather than a descriptive criterion. Let our images be in sepia, in black and white or in full colour : what matters is the message and not the medium.

5. We recognise that we have not only a duty to share our past but also to ensure that it is effectively preserved. Whilst images printed on photographic paper and words written in old notebooks fade with time, they have proved, in most cases, remarkably resilient over time. Perhaps one of the greatest dangers facing the millions of digital images and the endless pages of computerised words we produce today is that they can so easily be lost by the pressing of a wrong button or by the hacking of a troubled soul. We recognise and we accept our responsibility to back-up and securely save.

7 comments:

I have been following Sepia Saturday for awhile thinking that I have no sepia pictures to post about. But as I read the manifesto, I realize the truth in the statement. I am joining up and do have some sepia photos, and love genealogy so have many stories to tell. BlessingsQMM

Hello Kat and Alan,1. You really should register this blog over at GENEABLOGGERS so that more people can find it!2. When you have a moment, if you could correct my link in the sidebar - the name of my blog is A Canadian Family - although it is commonly mistaken as Acadian Family!Evelyn in Montreal

Great idea. Till now I published old family photos through my website, but publicity was small. Maybe through blogger I will be able to find more family members, which live now all through the world. I will write in Polish, as most of family live here, but can answer in English as well

I just found this and LOVE it. I linked to a post of March 1st, but I will be keeping you in mind for Saturdays form now on! Thank you for providing this avenue to share our treasured photos! I look forward to viewing the others!

Sepia Saturday

Launched by Alan Burnett and Kat Mortensen in 2009, Sepia Saturday provides bloggers with an opportunity to share their history through the medium of photographs. Historical photographs of any age or kind (they don't have to be sepia) become the launchpad for explorations of family history, local history and social history in fact or fiction, poetry or prose, words or further images. If you want to play along, all we ask is that your sign up to the weekly Linky List, that you try to visit as many of the other participants as possible, and that you have fun.